


Let It Ring

by lettersfromnowhere



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender, 四月は君の嘘 | Shigatsu wa Kimi no Uso | Your lie in April
Genre: Accompanist/Soloist AU, Alternate Universe - Shigatsu wa Kimi no Uso | Your Lie in April Fusion, Angst, F/M, Inspired by Shigatsu wa Kimi no Uso | Your lie in April, Off-screen Character Death, Zutara Week, Zutara Week 2020
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-27
Updated: 2020-07-27
Packaged: 2021-03-05 20:14:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,899
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25551127
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lettersfromnowhere/pseuds/lettersfromnowhere
Summary: He's a once-illustrious pianist whose light has gone out. She's a free-spirited violinist with a secret. Their paths cross. She gives him life, he brings her purpose. Fate has begun to change.If only life were so simple.(Or: the Your Lie in April AU that no one wanted, written for Zutara Week 2020, Day 2: "Counterparts.")
Relationships: Katara/Zuko (Avatar), Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Comments: 11
Kudos: 41





	Let It Ring

**Author's Note:**

> Ooooh, boy, guys, this one. This AU and the anime it's based on are incredibly near and dear to my heart. I'm a violinist, which is the obvious reason for me to love it, but there's another, deeper reason, too: I've never seen a piece of media that better captures the feeling of passion for one's craft (I feel the same way about writing), and of desperation for what you create to leave a mark on someone's heart, than "Your Lie in April" does. And when I realized how well the plot of the anime fit with Zuko and Katara's histories and personalities, I knew I had to write this. So, over the course of two days, I rewatched the entire anime as I wrote, transcribing what I saw into narrative form and adapting it to fit the story I wanted to tell (though I did my best to stay faithful to the subject matter, though I left out some scenes/episodes that were difficult to adapt) - and this was the result. I know it doesn't really fit the prompt, but...accompanists, right? It kind of works. But I hope you like it.
> 
> And, more than anything, I hope this reaches you.

Zuko exists in a haze before he sees her.

Life’s been monochrome for years. Since the day his mother died and so did his piano career he’s been as far from the technically-flawless prodigy of his youth as he possibly can be. He’s drifting, going through the motions; living day to day and pressing keys whose sound he can’t hear. He can’t play anymore, barely has the energy to drag himself through day after day of the same thing. He’s young but he doesn’t look it anymore and his friends say as much. They’re always saying things like that, trying to drag him out of his shell when he’s made it quite comfortable there, _thank you very much._

But then Ty Lee all but insists that he and Mai accompany her to meet the latest in a never-ending string of crushes – “a double-date! It’ll be fun!” she insists – and he suddenly lacks the strength to tell her he can’t. He tries like he always does, but Ty Lee won’t hear of it, and so he finds himself in the park after school one day.

And that’s when he sees her.

Ty Lee’s meeting her date, but the moment Zuko sees the girl playing a melodica atop a hill in the park they’re meeting in, he’s too distracted to care. A few young children surround the base of the hill, playing along on their own instruments, and she is their radiant leader, brown skin glowing, blue eyes alight, blue dress and wavy dark hair whipping around in the breeze. There are tears in her eyes when she stops, telling the little kids in front of her something about pigeons, and Zuko’s transfixed.

She’s no longer crying, and pigeons swarm the little group on the hill, and she’s the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen.

Of course, she’s royally mad when she notices him staring, and that earns him a death glare from Ty Lee’s date – melodica-girl’s brother, Sokka, he finds out – and Mai’s glaring at him, too, for whatever reason. But he’s still dizzy with the sensation of suddenly _knowing_ this person he never did before.

And then she’s gone as fast as she came, yelling about how late she’s going to be for a competition, and it’s only then that she picks up a violin case and –

_Oh._ Of course. They’re at the music hall. _What else?_ He thinks, because of _course_ this is the place he meets her, of _course_ this is where fate has directed him –

her name is Katara, he learns, and she is a violinist. And according to Ty Lee, at least, they are going to accompany her brother to watch the competition she’s participating in or die trying.

_Die trying_ seems more likely, and part of Zuko wants to scream at the very idea of taking a seat in the hall where so much of his early life was defined, but he can’t stay away. So he sits through _endless_ renditions of Beethoven’s Kreutzer Sonata, and tries to stifle the urge to say something when he notices Sokka snoring and Mai nodding off because – well, he’s left this world, but he can’t stand to see music disrespected this way.

So he watches and tries not to think, and when Katara takes the stage in blue floor-length satin and lifts her instrument, that’s no longer a problem, because…she’s _different_ than the rest. The rest are robotic, by-the-book – everything he was told to be. But she is nothing like then.

From the moment she strikes the opening chords of the sonata, Katara plays like a flame in the wind. She is not the compliant, complacent technician that the judges of these competitions always prefer – it’s as if she couldn’t care less what anyone thinks of a performance that is ever-so-clearly a statement of purpose and not a bid for the win.

He’s never seen anything like it, and he has a feeling she’s going to be in his life for a long, _long_ time.

* * *

Zuko doesn’t know how it happened, but a week later, sitting across a café table from Katara – who Ty Lee repeatedly insists accompany herself and her newest flame on their outings (both would rather decline) – with a plate of waffles between them, he can’t complain. Her eyes are alight, just like he’s grown to expect them to be.

He’s noticed that about her: it’s not just in her playing that Katara is like lightning in a bottle. She’s got an ever-present brightness in her eyes, wonder like a firefly-filled sky on a summer night in everything she does – in her conversations, in the terrible puns she loves to make and is entirely too committed to, in the way she’s looking at a plate of waffles. At the way she lights up when she sees a little piano covered in potted plants (Zuko’s horrified, thinking of the water damage) in the corner of a café.

She forces him to play something, of course, and soon they have an audience, but it’s not long before his fingers lose their grip on reality and his ears can’t pick out the notes anymore and his mother’s face is all he can see, and he freezes. _What was I thinking?_ he asks himself, ears burning. _It’s been too long! Why did I think I could do this?_ But…he had to. He cannot say no to her.

He tries, when she asks her to be his accompanist in the next round of the competition, but Katara won’t hear of it. She gets Ty Lee on her side, plasters the score for her chosen set piece – Saint-Saens’ “Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso” – on every surface he’ll see, playing it on loop wherever he can hear it. Katara and Sokka and Ty Lee and even Mai aren’t above resorting to physical violence if need be but it’s only when she corners him, alone on the roof at lunchtime, that she wins him over.

First she berates him. “You always isolate yourself!” she accuses, as if this hasn’t been his M.O. since the day his mother died and the metronome stopped clicking both inside and outside of his head. “Why won’t you just agree to be my accompanist already?”

He stammers out a response that probably makes no sense, and suddenly she’s standing in front of him, her blue eyes filling with tears. “You were _made_ for this, Zuko,” she tells him, crossing her arms as if to shield herself. “We _both_ were. And you can’t just keep running away from it forever!”

He _can,_ he wants to think. He tells her as much. He But…

  
“Please, Zuko,” he begs. “If you can’t do it for you, do it for _me._ Show me that someone…” she gasps for breath, tears beginning to spill. “Show me that someone still has faith in me! You have no idea how easy it would be for me to just… _break_ right now-“

“I’ll do it.”

  
Maybe it’s insanity, or seeing the eyes he can’t stop thinking about full of tears. Maybe it’s because what she’s saying struck a chord with him. Maybe it’s because he knows deep down that he hasn’t been able to resist her since the beginning.

But whatever it is, Zuko raises his eyes and says, “I’ll be your accompanist.”

(It’s not enough to stop Sokka and Ty Lee from trying to beat his face in, but the way her tear-stained face lights up makes every single punch worth it.)

* * *

This…was a _terrible_ idea.

He realizes this as he clings to Mai’s shoulders, holding on for dear life as her bike hurtles down the streets from the school where he is still supposed to be in class to the concert hall. He can’t remember the last time his morose best friend showed this much enthusiasm for _anything_ and it’s, frankly, a little bit terrifying. But it _works,_ and they make it to the concert hall with just enough time to spare for Zuko to freak out. He has no idea why he agreed to this, regrets the moment he said he’d do it – because this is _insanity._ He’s barely read the score to the music he’s supposed to be playing, and he should’ve been drilling it into his brain for _weeks._

But he takes the stage with Katara and there’s no going back.

At first, he almost believes he can do this. He hears the sound of every note he presses as clearly as he ever has, his accompaniment clinging to the contours of every note from Katara’s violin, and he nearly smiles because _this_ is what she was asking for when she begged him to accompany her –

But then he remembers where and who and _why_ he is, and the panic begins to set in. Slowly, the dark sea he’s used to sinking into whenever he tries to play swallows up his music, and he’s pressing the keys but no sound comes out, and suddenly –

Zuko stops.

He can’t move his fingers, can’t move a _muscle._ Dimly, he’s aware that Katara is still playing, but he’s an eight-year-old too short for the piano bench all over again, his head bowed over the keys, his mother’s face and the _tick, tick, tick_ of the metronome fighting with the sheet music and the keys in front of him for control of his mind.

But then Katara stops, and she turns to him and every encouraging word she’s uttered comes rushing back, and even though he can’t hear, even though nothing is _right_ and _he’ll_ never play like things are right again, he begins to play again, and Katara lifts her violin even though she knows they’re disqualified.

And they finish, and Zuko almost can’t believe this is real.

Then a crash jolts him back into reality, and Katara’s crumpled on the floor, her violin face-down, with the periwinkle chiffon of her skirt splayed out all around her.

* * *

Zuko almost didn’t want to take Ty Lee and Mai up on their offer to visit Katara with him. After all, it’s _his_ fault she was disqualified.

But they go to see her, and her smile doesn’t dim, and though Zuko can tell her smile is a little forced when she insists that her health has never been better, she’s… _happy_ to see him. Doesn’t say a word about the competition.

He doesn’t understand it, and the guilt of having caused pain for which she doesn’t even blame him is unbearable. It’s why he can’t stand to visit her after that first time, doesn’t talk to her until she returns to school and they happen to meet on the bridge – she’s playing hopscotch with two kids who claim she’s waiting for someone.

And, of _course,_ Zuko makes her cry again without even realizing how he did it, and he realizes he’ll do _anything_ to dry those tears. He says as much out loud, and Katara brightens immediately. He just knows she’s been waiting for this.

And her answer is proof of that: “if you’d really do _anything_ I asked, enter a piano competition.”

* * *

The first time Katara plays Zuko a recording of him practicing the Chopin etude she’s chosen for his set piece, he wants to set the entire music room on fire. It’s so… _off._ This is truly the worst idea imaginable, and he can’t believe he ever let her talk him into it. But then he catches a glimpse of her sleeping against the wall beneath the window while he’s practicing, sun illuminating her face, and he remembers why.

She tries apologizing to him, because she knows without him having to say it that something inside Zuko dies every time he sits down at the piano and it’s for _her_ that he’s playing, but he won’t hear of it, and that’s when it hits him.

He can’t live without piano, or without _her._

* * *

Zuko knows he has rivals. It’s never been a secret that his early successes were the envy of his peers, and the looks he gets from his competitors as he walks into the concert hall on the day of the piano competition are proof that their resentment hasn’t faded a single shade in all the years he’s been away.

(He notices the petite girl staring him down with all the vitriol in the world in her milky green eyes, and the conflicted boy she stands next to, on the way in and wonders where he’s seen those faces before.)

He’s not listening. He doesn’t hear the boy play with more determination in three minutes than most will be able to muster in an entire lifetime, or the girl give the performance of a lifetime. He doesn’t know that both are playing because of _him,_ because the child prodigy who inspired and incensed so many has suddenly reappeared, a bolt from the blue whose brightness neither can wait to match.

Instead, he’s thinking of his mother, the way she played, all the hours of lessons she’d given him in the hope that he’d transcend this, the way she’d always push him. “The better you play, the better I feel,” she’d always say, the weakening hands that had once wrung such emotion from the keys grasping his own. “And your father…”

She never needed to complete that sentence: _maybe he’ll be proud of you. Maybe he’ll finally be satisfied. Maybe he’ll think I’m worth something._

In the days and months and years following her death, the notes of the piano had faded because she was gone along with any hope he’d ever had that his playing could give anything to anyone, be _worth_ anything when it hadn’t brought her back and it hadn’t stopped his father from seeing him as a useless nobody.

And now he was here because of Katara, but as hard as she’d tried to nurse that shriveled and diminished part of his heart back to health, no one could.

And when he plays, a perfect opening gives way to a dark, vast sea. His mother’s voice in his ear begs him to _get this right, show your father that your playing is worth something,_ and he can’t hear but he can’t stop. He sounds like he’s giving up and he can’t hear it but he _knows,_ because a part of him died that day and he doesn’t think it’ll ever be alive. Then he _does_ stop, and a deathly silence falls over the hall.

And then. And _then._

He thinks, and…it’s not his mother’s face in his mind, not his father’s voice telling him he’s wasting his life. It’s _Katara,_ and no one but, taking up residence there, refusing to let go of the belief that he _will_ turn this around, he _will_ be all he was before and more, and his fingers begin to move again, painting the hall in endless, brilliant color.

She is springtime, and when he plays, spring erupts from the keys, a riot of sound and color and _rebirth._

He’s disqualified, of course, but he runs across an old friend of his mother’s – a pianist, of course – and it feels oddly perfect, one of the few bright spots of his childhood reemerging along with the person he used to be. Iroh embraces him, asks who he was playing for ( _it’s not love,_ Zuko wants to scream, _it’s gratitude),_ and…things feel almost alright.

* * *

It’s barely a few days before Katara recruits him as her accompanist again.

“There’s an exhibition,” she tells him. “For the top finishers at the Towa Competition. But…I’m not going to force you.” He agrees, of course, because – as he’s establized – Zuko can’t say no. But he almost wishes he had when she shows him the music she’s chosen.

Fritz Kriesler’s “Liebeslied”. _Love’s Sorrow._

His mother’s favorite piece.

He begs her to choose a different piece, _anything_ else, but she won’t. Instead she drags him out one night to a field of fireflies.

(Zuko watches her catch and release one, its yellow glow disappearing into the night, and when Katara asks how he played the way he did at the competition, he’s an instant from telling her everything. _Everything-_ everything.)

Instead he tells the simplest version of the truth he can. “It was all because of you,” he says. And it’s nothing but the truth.

But the truth is so much more than that.

* * *

Playing _Love’s Sorrow_ is like a waking nightmare.

It’s one of three pieces – _Love’s Joy, Love’s Sorrow, Lovely Rosemary –_ that form a set, the Three Old Viennese Dances, though his mother only ever played the second. He remembers it so clearly, the soft notes of Rachmaninov’s piano arrangement filtering down the hallway from her piano to his bedroom when she’d play it until he slept. It was good back then, _pure –_ it reminds Zuko of Katara, the way she plays with every piece of her heart.

Not like it was in the end, when he played to prove the worth of his career – of his _existence –_ to his father.

When he tells Iroh about the gala, he looks pensive, says something about learning to let go through music that’s every bit as cryptic as he remembers his advice being, but in a way it _does_ make sense.

Maybe playing this is what he needs to move on.

* * *

Practices are endless now. It’s late when Zuko drops Katara off at home only to be assailed by her grandmother at the bakery her family apparently owns, the stars too bright for their own good. ( _Don’t give me hope,_ he wants to think, but he can’t bring herself to do it. And after another, Ty Lee and Sokka get their hands on sparklers (somehow – Zuko really doesn’t think it should be as easy as it is) and they find their way to a community pool that’s open late.

They talk about high school and a future Zuko’s never dared to think about, and he doesn’t miss the cold, hard fear in Katara’s eyes when Sokka asks them where they’ll end up next year. But it slips his mind when a sparkler accident he could easily have predicted winds them up at the bottom of the pool. It’s moments like those that he carries with them into the concert hall at the Gala the next week, and he’s hopeful for the first time in who-knows-how-long.

But that’s before Katara fails to show up by her call time.

* * *

She doesn’t show up, and for whatever reason…he’s not panicking.

Zuko simply knows what he has to do, because he knows this piece and these keys like he knows his own heart, and he knows what he’s here to do: to prove her mettle while Katara can’t.

It’s always been his mother’s song, and he doesn’t think _Love’s Sorrow_ will ever lose that mark permanently, but right now, it is his. It is a vehicle for his frustration, for his anguish, for everything he’s felt since his mother slipped away and since the day Katara saw the darkness of his despair and dragged him back into the light. He cannot hear, but he can _feel,_ and so long as he can do that, this piece can be anything.

It can be sorrow, conflict, gentleness; it can be despair and hope all at once. It can be anything he is, anything Katara would be if she were here. It is proof of her skill as much as it is of his. It is a love letter and a confession.

It is the moment the waves break and he floats to the top of the sea that surrounds him for the first time since his mother died.

* * *

She’s in the hospital again.

Katara’s a little too cheerful when they visit her, insisting it was just a little slip-up – “I hit my head, my dad just freaked out! I promise, I’m fine” – and Ty Lee’s as perky as ever. Zuko can see that there’s something she’s not telling them, and it’s more terrifying than he knows how to describe. But no one sees anything beyond the megawatt smile she flashes everyone.

Even when he comes back to visit her alone that night and she prods him about the duet he turned into a solo when she bailed. She’s never looked prouder, and something about it makes him feel a little lighter.

But then she begins to cry, and he wants to beg her to tell him what’s really wrong, say the past isn’t repeating itself. But he doesn’t, and her stricken expression doesn’t waver.

Then he gets a call about Mai – a friend of hers, saying she needs him – and he’s racing off to meet her, only to see that she’s fine, but he doesn’t mind the distraction. They walk along the beach – he notices the moon, can’t help but hum. _Clair de Lune –_ they both know it well and she hums it back, weirdly… _happy_ for someone so grim.

Until he tells her he’s decided on a high school. He’ll move away, focusing on music in high school.

Mai goes dead-silent and runs, and he doesn’t know what to say.

(She’s still in the hospital the next week, and he brings her caneles. But then he reaches her door and hears her laughing with Sokka, and he’s glad he stayed away.

But she calls him, yelling, because he’s the only one who hasn’t been visiting, and he promises her a return trip and a new set of caneles.)

* * *

She’s walking down the halls after hanging up on Zuko, practically skipping at the prospect of a visit and some caneles, when her legs give way beneath her, and they won’t let her back up. There’s nothing she can reach for, she can’t get purchase – her slippers lay discarded as she drags herself to the wall, breathing heavily, and tries to stand.

There are tears in Katara’s eyes and she wants to scream, but her legs won’t move, and she knows.

That’s when she knows.

* * *

The next time they meet, it is an accident. He’s walking to the hospital when she sees Katara, wearing her school uniform – _when did she come back?_ Zuko wants to ask. She pretends to have forgotten who he was, but soon she’s dragging him to the mall.

“You make a great pack animal,” she explains, winking, and soon she’s off in such a blur of motion that Zuko wonders how she could possibly be the same girl who he last saw pale and bandaged in a hospital bed. She throws every last one of her purchases at him and soon he can barely stand under the weight of her bags.

And then it hits him. “Uh, Katara?” he asks.

“Mm-hm?” she’s too deliriously happy to be bothered.

“Where’s your backpack?”

And then they’re off to find it, traipsing through the school after hours to find a bag that she later reveals was never there. “I had a day out,” she explains. “I’m…sorry. I just couldn’t keep staying away.”

As they stand in a classroom, moonlight illuminating their faces as she asks if he’ll ever forget her – _what? –_ his answer couldn’t be clearer.

“No,” he says. “No, Kat. I couldn’t.” And he wonders who he’d be without her, and he pretends not to notice that she’s crying as she clings to his blazer on the bike ride home.

* * *

Soon, it’s clear that Katara’s not getting better. She’s not back in school, and soon he can’t even stomach the idea of visiting her in the hospital. It feels too much like it did when his mother was slipping away and no one’s saying it, but he knows…

He knows she’s not going to be the girl she was again. 

Later, Ty Lee confronts him about it, all but insists that he accompany her on their next visit and chews him out for giving her the cold shoulder ( _if only he knew)_ and he breaks down, because Ty Lee saw him break eight years ago just like he is now, and she can’t possibly have forgotten it.

She hasn’t; her face softens, and she wraps him up in a hug and lets Zuko cry into her uniform blazer. “She needs you, Zuko,” she tells him, as if that’s all there is to it.

Then again, maybe it _is,_ and this time he comes back with caneles, doing his best, giving one-word answers to everything she asks. He says he doesn’t know what to say and –

“Then just forget me,” she says, too chipper. “Then everything will go back to the way it was! Just hit that reset button and move along, and someday I’ll be gone and you’ll be able to go on like nothing ever happened-“

So he grabs the caneles she asked for and begins to shove them in his mouth because it’s about as ridiculous as the idea that he could _ever_ forget Katara, and he closes the door but…he can hear her laugh through the door. She’s _laughing._ Katara’s fourteen and close to the end, and she’s _laughing,_ because he had the _audacity_ to eat her caneles.

He can’t decide whether it’s a victory or a defeat.

* * *

When he meets her on the rooftop and begs her for one last duet, and somehow they both know they’d do anything at all to make that true. 

She cries but it’s a resounding _yes._

* * *

Katara’s not in her room the next time Zuko goes to visit her, and it’s only when he runs into her father and grandmother outside the hospital that he realizes she’s in physical therapy. He watches her grasp the bars on either side of her for dear life as she takes one halting, shuddering step after another, and her father thanks him.

“For what?” he asks.

“This is all because of you,” he tells her. “She’d given up. And now…”

They just watch her walk, the physical therapist in front of her to catch her if she stumbles – but she doesn’t. He tells her about the surgery – a risky experimental procedure she’s agreed to undergo if it’ll give her even the slightest chance of playing again. _No,_ part of him wants to scream, while the other cries _yes, yes, yes._

He can’t decide which is worse – fighting too hard and running out of strength or slipping away with no fight at all – but…he wants to play with her again, more than anything, and so Zuko’s heart swells. _She’s not giving up. She’ll do anything._

It’s all he can think of as entrance exam season kicks into high gear and Zuko throws himself into preparations for the Eastern Japan Piano Competition. It could be his ticket into the music school he wants to attend – the one in another prefecture, away from his father; the one that’ll let him become what Katara will never get the chance to be.

As he plays, he pictures the determination on her face, the tremors racing up her arms, the steps she takes with every ounce of strength in her body. And it is enough.

* * *

Zuko runs into the two pianists from last competition who seem to have a bone to pick with him – the milky-eyed girl and the boy who never looks quite sure of where he is. They eat egg sandwiches backstage, and it’s the strangest dichotomy.

  
Rivals, breaking bread. They are each other’s enemies and each other’s inspiration. And when they make it past the prelims together, it feels like it’s exactly how it was supposed to be.

* * *

He’s supposed to visit Katara again, but her family is visiting, and he can’t bring himself to do it. So halks home with Mai through a rainstorm instead and she’s quiet, as usual, but something’s off about it. Everything they say takes on weight and he can’t understand _why,_ not until she lights into him.

“You’re avoiding her,” she says flatly, in the only way she knows how. “Because you love her.” 

He doesn’t deny it, and he doesn’t notice the faint glint in her eyes. “Well, you have no chance,” she snaps, but it doesn’t sound genuine. “But you have to visit her anyway.”

“I can’t-“

“If it would make it any easier, you could always just fall in love with me instead,” Mai says, and he freezes in shock, the blood draining from his body. _She…wants that?_

And then she kicks his shin and bolts into the rain, and Zuko’s never been more confused.

(She is his best friend. She’s always been like a sister to him and now… _this?)_

* * *

Katara tells him not to visit. “Focus on getting ready for the finals!” she says, too chipper, over the phone, and Zuko kicks himself, wondering what he’s done to make this worse. But then she calls back, asking if he can see the plane that’s flown by her hospital window.

He can, and it comforts him, knowing they share the same sky even as their lives swing further and further away from each other.

_Is this what being in love feels like?_

He visits with Ty Lee and Sokka, tells him how he feels in the stairwell, and it’s the first time he admits to loving her.

But they reach his room to the frantic shouts of nurses, sees her trembling and almost lifeless, and runs, frantic, into the street because nothing makes _sense_ anymore. It feels like an omen when he runs across a cat that’s been hit by a car and he carries it to a veterinary office because somehow saving that cat feels a little like saving her.

But then the vets tell him there’s nothing to be done, and all he can see is her face in his mind, and suddenly Zuko can’t stop himself from crying because he knows now, he _knows._

Life has never been more cruel.

* * *

Zuko spends the night after they see her crumpled on the floor, trying to hold together what little is left of himself. Katara’s alive, but no one has any illusions about the fact that she might not be for long, and entrance exams and piano competitions seem like the least important things in the world. But Iroh storms his house after too many missed calls, begs him to rejoin the world again, and when he gets to school, there’s a note in Zuko’s desk bearing three words:

_I want caneles._

Katara’s out of the ICU, and when he brings the caneles, she’s too bright and too cheery and he can’t _believe_ Katara can be so blasé about the fact that she’s _dying._

  
But caneles on the roof seem perfect right now, and as he carries her up the stairs (Katara is so _light_ on his back, barely even there – it’s scary how easy it is to climb the stairs with her on his back), he tells himself to treasure this, burn every moment of it into his mind as he sets her down on a bench in the falling snow. White flakes dust their faces and clothes as they sit on the roof, eating caneles. She asks if he’s been playing the piano, and he finally _says_ what he’s been thinking – of course he hasn’t, because music brings nothing but loss, that he’s weeks from being alone again.

“You’ll still have me,” she insists, smiling. “The surgery could work, you know. You gotta fight for it!” 

He nearly cries, telling her there’s no use, he’s spent too long not playing to pull anything off now. But then she’s standing, miming the motions of her playing as the snow falls around her as the wind whips her clothes and her trembling legs collapse under her.

Zuko catches her, crouching as she lays in his lap, clasping at the sleeves of his uniform shirt, asking questions that have nothing to do with anything as she begins to cry into his shirt. Katara clings to him, admitting she’s afraid to die, and he can’t give up.

He can’t. Not again.

* * *

The surgery’s the same day as Zuko’s competition, and he doesn’t want to think about it as he waits in the hallway for his turn to begin. He’s curled up against the wall, and he doesn’t move. But then the two he keeps running into show up again, asking him what’s wrong as he mutters to himself.

Their kindness would stop him in his tracks most days, but today he can’t register anything but the sound of his name being called. His competitors beg him not to do it – “you look faint, are you _sure_ about this? You’re like a ghost!” – but he can’t.

He’s promised this, and maybe if he can do this one simple thing…well.

Maybe he could do for Katara what he couldn’t for his mother, prove to her what he couldn’t prove to his father. He sees her face, hears her words, as he takes a seat, and he almost breaks. He can’t even look up to meet the sheet music, but Mai sneezes from the front row and somehow, it’s enough. He sees her in the front row with Ty Lee (Sokka would’ve been here, he’d said, but he’s at the hospital), looks back to the wings and sees his competitors (Aang and Toph, he knows now) standing there in solidarity rather than enmity, and he knows that he will never be alone so long as he has them by his side.

From the opening notes of Chopin’s Ballade no. 1, he feels them with him in every measure. They are the reason he is playing. They are the ones who give him what his mother ran out of his time to give him and what his father never would’ve been willing to. It’s the first time he’s _wanted_ this in a long, long time. And he’s glad he does.

  
He is a pianist, and he always will be. And she will always be the violinist who gave his music life.

More than anything he has ever wanted in his life, Zuko wants his song to reach her.

He thinks of their duet as he plays, and it is as if she is there with him. He hears her violin match the melody he plays, sees swirling snow, feels her feather-light weight on his back. Zuko swears he can see it, her expectant smile and hair blowing in an invisible wind, wearing the dress she’d worn all those months ago when they’d played together. The Katara in his head plays with every trace of the spirit she’d shown back then, the spirit his playing shows now.

  
She gave that to him, passed that spirit in her playing along to him just as she was preparing to say goodbye. And, buoyed by that spirit, he plays in every color and texture, presses every key with his whole heart.

She is the reason he’s here, the reason he’s woken up from the half-asleep daze he’d confined himself to before her. She is freedom and passion and… _everything._ She is everything he never was and everything he is becoming now and he plays for her.

  
And as the Katara in his mind fades away in a burst of brilliant light, he knows, and he wishes more than anything that he didn’t. He’d pay any price for her to storm the stage this very moment and wallop him with her slipper but he _can’t._ He’s learned the hard way that nothing can call back lost time.

So he infuses every last note with the flavor of that loss, mourning in notes and chords, and his tears strike the keys long after his fingers stop.

* * *

Her father and grandfather press a letter into his hands after the funeral. Zuko doesn’t want to read it at first, but soon the cherry blossoms are falling again, and he can’t stop.

_Dear Zuko,_

_You’re a disaster. You’re a pushover, and you give up without a fight. When we met, most people would’ve given up on you in a second, because you were always so defeated. There was no light in your eyes. But that wasn’t who you were, and that’s part of why I could never do that._

_The other part is because you changed my life. You were the reason I chose to become a violinist._

_When I was little, I used to play the piano, and our school would put on recitals. You played at one, and I remember being in the audience and amazed that this little boy who wasn’t even as tall as me seemed so confident up on that stage. And so passionate. When you began to play, it was like my black-and-white world went all into color. You made that piano sing for you, and I couldn’t look away. I begged my dad and Gran-Gran to buy me a violin after that, because I knew I’d never be able to live with myself if I didn’t get to play with you someday. That duet was the goal I’d been striving for since I was five years old, Zuko._ You _did that for me._ You _brought me that passion and joy. I know you think that’s what I gave it to you, but really, I was just returning the favor._

_I don’t know if I would even be me if I hadn’t seen you._

_Then we ended up at the same middle school, I hoped you’d notice me, but I didn’t know how to make that happen. There was no one to introduce me to you, and I didn’t want to butt in on anything. You had your group already and it would’ve been weird if I’d spoken up, so I didn’t. It was only when I knew I was running out of time that I finally took the plunge._

_I was always a little bit sick growing up, but things started to get worse a few years ago. I didn’t know what was really going on until I saw my parents crying, but…no one needed to explain that one to me. I was thirteen and I was coming to the end, so I made a choice I’ll never regret._

_I made my life what I wanted to be. I chose to run after everything I wanted no matter what, and I ran after you. I nudged my brother in Ty Lee’s direction, knowing it’d give me a way to you. And I asked you to be my accompanist, because that was the one thing I knew I couldn’t die without doing. I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t play with you just one time. And Zuko…it was the best thing I’ve ever done._

_And yeah, I know how Mai feels about you. I’m sorry that I hurt her. I didn’t want to make a mess, so I never said anything. But honestly, knowing you as well as I got to, I know why she fell for you. You’re a little annoying and a lot mopey, but you’re gentle and sensitive and you’d do anything for the people you love. You have a heart, Zuko. Don’t forget that._

_Remember all the time we spent together doing stupid stuff that felt so important? Jumping off that bridge, riding bikes, caneles on the roof – it all seemed so special because it was with_ you. _I loved every minute we spent together, Zuko. Even if I said you were annoying. (You were.) I think it’s kinda weird how important those little things felt, but then again, I really don’t. If I take anything with me when I go, I want it to be the way I felt when I was with you, no matter where we were or what were you doing._

_So I guess I just want to know if it worked. If I worked my way into your heart like I wanted to. Did I make myself a place in your heart? Are you gonna remember me or just kick me out as soon as I’m gone and I can’t pay the rent on it anymore? Will you still hear the notes of a violin sometimes and think about me? Did I reach you?_

_Did I reach you?_

_I want that more than anything, Zuko, because the truth is that I love you, and I always have, and I always will, even after I’m gone._

_I’m sorry that I never said anything. I’m sorry I pushed you, and hit you, and threw things at you, and made your life so chaotic. I’m sorry I couldn’t stick around. Don’t you dare use this as an excuse to give up, Zuko. Don’t you dare._

_I love you too much to die without telling you that you better live. Or else._

_  
Love,_

_Katara_

The falling blossoms caress his tear-stained skin as he folds the letter back into its envelope, his hands trembling.

_She loved me._

As he leans against the bench, tears falling in earnest now, Zuko thinks she’s set a task before him that he can’t complete. Going on with a life that no longer has her in it seems so impossible. But if _she_ could go on in the face of a ticking clock, he can surely go on with the keys under his fingers and those he loves still by his side. 

It is a springtime without Katara, but so long as he plays and so long as he does not give in, she’ll never truly be gone.


End file.
